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Notes -
Petty Local Political Whining
In my state this is an off-off-year election, meaning that only local and non-headliner state positions are up for election. No congress, no senate, no state reps, no governor, no president. Turnout tends to be smaller, and local issues are less swamped by national ones.
Our County Republican Committee spent thousands in the primary this year, essentially picking one Republican candidate over another. Accusing Republican school board incumbents who didn't make Trans Kids their #1 issue of being RINOs and endorsing candidates who ran on a platform of removing books from the school library. Scandal-wracked Judicial candidates who took strong Pro-Life positions publicly were endorsed over candidates with stronger records who stayed quiet on controversies. County council races were handed to MAGA candidates who promised to "look into" election integrity. They picked the winners in every primary race, endorsing farther right candidates over moderates, specifically sending out mail telling voters "not to be fooled" by candidates running the Republican primary who weren't "real" Republicans.
Ronald Reagan's famous Eleventh Commandment, which read "thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," was not followed.
And now we're just a couple weeks out from the General, and from the local party apparatus it has been CRICKETS. No mail, no TV ads, no coordinated door to door volunteers, no slates, no billboards. The closest they've gotten was a little postcard saying something along the lines of "Hey, actually, mail in voting is pretty cool and not at all fraudulent, you should try it."
And I'm FURIOUS, because this is a total betrayal and reversal of their role. The party endorsing in the primary election ruins the point of a primary election. The whole idea of a primary is that the voters, rather than the party, get to decide who the nominee will be. Plenty of blame to put on the moron sheep voting in these primaries, who voted the party line in an internal party election. But even worse is then failing to follow through and provide resources for the candidates you picked. Sending out mail on their behalf. Coordinating so that every candidate goes out and knocks on doors, and every candidate that goes knocking has literature for every other candidate to hand out. Providing cover so that candidates don't have to take controversial stands publicly and can instead couch it in oblique dog whistles. Giving the kind of support that makes up for the local newspapers running aggressive stories about every R candidate.
Now they've hung their radical picks for candidates out to dry, and there's a very good chance Republicans get shellacked in the general. Which might not have happened had more moderate candidates been chosen, but to choose more radical candidates and then fail to support them is malpractice. If this pattern is repeating in local Republican parties across the country, the party is likely entering a dark period. It's the Iron Law of Institutions, instituted as organizational policy. You can't win when you force your candidates to play to the extremes, then fail to support them against your actual opponents.
The Trump era has been a historic disaster for the Republican Party downballot. After fighting and clawing it's way into centuriate power during the Tea Party era, reaching a peak of state and local power in 2016 unmatched since the 1920s, the anti-Trump backlash drove them out of power everywhere in 2018 and 2019.
They have the luck that the Democrats really suck at not just assuming they will hold power forever, so driving yet more backlash, but people in many places would rather have Democratic leftists over Trumpist conspiracy theorists (even if that is a near run thing).
The fact that the crazies have gained local party power in a lot of places is going to be a hobble on the party's performance for a long time. Arizona -- what is probably still a light red state in natural circumstances -- is probably going to be become blue just because the AZGOP is nuts.
My local party has stayed mostly sane, thankfully, so hopefully we can finish pushing the Democrats who won county control for the first time in half a century back into minority status. We'll see.
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